Bangkok: You could call it a cover-up. Just hours after a Thai Airways jet skidded off a Bangkok runway on Monday, leading to the frantic evacuation of 288 passengers, workers painted over the plane’s distinctive purple and gold logo with black paint.
Concealing the logo may seem a somewhat futile move, considering the plane spent the morning resting in the grass next to the runway with evacuation slides hanging out, but it is thought to be a damage limitation move by the airline, hoping to protect its reputation just two weeks after 20 passengers were injured after another Thai Airways plane hit heavy turbulence near Hong Kong.
Yet, in an area of protocol designed to manage one of our most feared occurrences, the airline is not the first to engage in one of the more bizarre examples of post-plane-crash etiquette
Why do airlines paint over the logo?
Described by a Thai Airways official following yesterday’s incident as the “crisis communication rule”, there have been several occasions in the past when airlines have rushed to paint over a plane’s livery following a crash.
Take the Alitalia crash in February this year, when the ATR-72 plane veered off the runway in Rome, injuring 16 people. Giancarlo Schisano, Alitalia’s director of operations, described the scramble to blackout the airline logo as a “routine practice used all over the world”. Speaking to the Daily Telegraph, he said: “Blocking out a carrier’s livery is a normal way of protecting a company’s reputation, and even more in this case, because it is not an Alitalia plane.” Indeed, despite being originally coated in red, white and green, the plane was leased from a Romanian budget airline, Carpatair. No surprise then, that the only marking left on the plane by workmen was a small Romanian flag.
What happens to the black box?
Black boxes — which are actually bright orange with reflective strips — are officially known as flight data recorders. They are thought to have picked up the nickname due to the original 1939 design being a photographic based system, that recorded using a piece of film and required the inside of the box to be pitch black in the same way as a dark room. Black boxes are mandatory on any commercial or corporate jet; as well as collecting data, they record all crew conversations and sounds from the cockpit. Crucial to finding out the cause of an accident, the box can withstand a fire of 1,100C for up to an hour and is sometimes the only device to survive. To minimise the damage done to them, black boxes are always installed in the tail of the plane which is usually the last section to impact. After a crash, investigators will race to find the box to analyse its contents for clues.
What happens to the pilots?
Unless vandalism or terrorism is suspected, the site of a plane crash is not considered to be a crime scene and should the pilots have survived, they are free to go to their hotel. However, air crash investigators will rigorously interview the crew and compare this with recordings on the black box.
The human performance team will conduct interviews, toxicology tests, speak to family and friends of the crew and even assess the airline’s corporate culture. Questions can include anything from what major personal life changes the pilots have experienced, to what the mood of the crew was before the flight.
What happens to your luggage?
Anyone who has had the pleasure of listening to the in-flight safety guidance will know that in the event of an emergency, one should not rush back to their seat in order to grab duty free you picked up in duty free.
This didn’t stop traumatised passengers back in July, who calmly collected their luggage while exiting, as their Asiana Airlines Flight 214 burned on the runway of San Francisco airport. They might be forgiven if they knew the official process; airlines are usually unable to access luggage while the crash is still being investigated and usually end up just compensating passengers for the loss of belongings instead, in accordance with the standard contract of carriage.
How are passengers compensated?
Compared to other compensation claims, getting a payment after a plane crash is relatively straightforward. This is because it is not necessary for the person seeking damages to prove that any negligence has occurred. The Montreal Convention, which was adopted in 1999 by the International Civil Aviation Organisation, sets out the terms of compensation for international flights and holds airlines under strict liability in the event of any injury to a passenger.]
However, despite this international treaty, passengers from different countries may still receive different payouts as they have the choice to seek compensation where they live, at their final destination, where the ticket was issued, where the air carrier is based, or the location where the air carrier mainly operates. Payouts for the death of a child in a plane crash in the US could be up to $10 million (Dh36.7 million), while past cases in South Korea have seen payouts closer to $500,000.
What happens to the flight number?
Despite three passengers losing their lives as a result of the Asiana Flight 214 crash, the plane continued to “fly” between Seoul and San Francisco for over a month before the airline officially retired the flight number this August, renaming it Flight 212.
While, for obvious reasons, airlines usually do retire flight numbers after a crash, it is not a given and nor does it relate to the severity of the accident. For example, the US Airways Flight 1549, which was famously landed into the Hudson river, saving all passengers, is no longer in use, while the Delta Flight 723 which crashed in Boston in 1973 killing everyone on board is now back in use, albeit on a different route.
Despite the numbers of the United Airlines flights involved in the 9/11 attacks being permanently retired, an apparent computer error led to them being reassigned in 2011 much to the shock of prospective passengers. The union that represents United’s flight attendants described this as a “terrible misstep”, while an airline spokesman said the glitch “should not have happened”.
